The Unexamined Life
by Lorendiac
Summary: The Phantom Stranger is the narrator. He loses most of his usual advantages and will spend much of the story trying to make sense of it, if he can find the right helpers in his weakened condition.
1. Chapter 1: Meeting the Sorceress

My attempt to offer a fanfic narrated by the Phantom Stranger.

General Setting: The DCU as it was being presented in comics published around the first few months of 1993. As a quick summary of what that means: Aquaman still has both of the hands he was born with; Ollie Queen is still alive and kicking; Hal Jordan is still a Green Lantern in good standing; David Knight is the current Starman; Jean Paul Valley is staying at Wayne Manor but Bruce Wayne is still the one and only Batman (Bane has not yet broken his back, but _is_ already planning it); the Matrix Supergirl is dating a red-bearded man who calls himself "Lex Luthor II" and she has_ never_ seen or heard of anyone named Linda Danvers (much less merged with her!); Superman recently _died_ and was given a lavish funeral.

I don't promise all of those things will be important to _this_ story, but if you're familiar with the DC comics that were coming out in those days, it gives you an idea of what to expect when superhero guest stars pop in during later chapters (not this first one, sorry!).

This is only the first chapter of something much longer, so of course it ends on a cliffhanger. I have a rough outline for the entire plot, but I'm not ready to commit myself to a given number of chapters.

* * *

**Chapter One: Meeting the Sorceress**

Sometimes, as the Chariot of Apollo slides below the horizon, and shadows lengthen until they cover a city entirely, and stars begin to twinkle through the smog, I commence to walk the shadowy paths in search of the crucial moments in the lives of mortals; moments when they are charged with karmic potential to go very right or very wrong; moments where a few words of wise counsel might help them clarify the nature of the choices they face.

Other evenings, I just pull on my hat to shade my eyes and wander around in the dark waiting for something interesting to happen. It all works out about the same in the long run.

This was one of those latter evenings. For a wonder, there seemed to be no cosmic crisis looming on the horizon in the immediate future. On the other hand, Kal-El of Krypton had recently died and been entombed with great fanfare, but Doctor Occult had already assured me that he was keeping an eye on the situation and still saw reason to hope for the Man of Steel's return if the cards fell right. I was satisfied that the Doctor could monitor things properly without my peering over his shoulder to double-check his observations.

I wandered the shadows of Metropolis for a time, attending to odds and ends of business that fell within my field. I arranged a premonitory dream for a lad who been invited to participate in his very first burglary; argued philosophy for several minutes with a student who had read far too much Soren Kierkegaard and was consequently pondering suicide; whispered in the ear of a woman who intended to give her abusive "lover" one more chance to prove he could control his temper. Based on past experience, I felt it likely my influence would help extend the life expectancy of at least one of the three, though I didn't know which one that would be. These matters were not of the type where _I _could directly interfere with _their_ self-determination.

Standing on a sidewalk on in Metropolis, I ducked into a narrow alley going north and promptly emerged on West 36th Street, two and a half miles away as the crow flies. This block had a used-book store that I hadn't visited in years. Even I occasionally try to stretch my mind by reading something I have never read before. There was a time when the Great Library of Alexandria was the nearest thing I had to a home; and many centuries later I used to wander through the chambers of a remarkable Benedictine library in northern Italy after closing hours.

I patted a pocket in my opera cape and confirmed that I could purchase anything that caught my fancy. After an adventure in South Carolina the previous summer I had on a whim picked up a wad of American cash that the now-deceased owner would no longer require (and hadn't earned honestly in the first place). Having little need for such mortal preoccupations as the purchase of food, beverage, transportation, or shelter, I might end up keeping some of those bills tucked away for a very long time until I needed to purchase a new hat or cloak or other raiment. (Occult had been trying for five decades to persuade me to experiment with a trenchcoat, and recently I had obliged him, briefly, when we were working together on a particularly important venture, but it had failed to impress me as superior to my old look. Keeping up with transitory fashions is another thing I refuse to worry about.)

As I stepped through the doorway beneath the "Used & Rare Books" sign, I glanced from left to right, taking a quick inventory of the current theme of the displays at the front of the store. All Hallows Eve was a few weeks away, and the displays reflected this. Tables were covered with old books purporting to reveal the secrets of the spiritualistic, the supernatural, the psychic, the paranormal, the arcane, or whatever adjective a given author (or editor) had seen fit to mention in the title or in a separate blurb on the front of the volume. The dealer had humorously arranged stacks of eight different purported "translations" of _The Necronomicon_ on the same table. _Choose the version you want to be true,_ the display seemed to whisper. Antithetical to my own views on the nature of truth, but I rather thought H.P. Lovecraft would have approved. As I drifted near, an auburn-haired woman smiled to herself at something in the middle of one version she was perusing.

I glanced over the Necronomicon display, saw nothing I hadn't seen before, and moved on to another table. Nothing really caught my fancy - I wasn't sure what I wanted, but I was sure I didn't see it. I ducked behind a bookcase, _sidestepped_, and emerged out of a patch of shadow across the street from a similar establishment in downtown Gotham. Thirty feet to my left on the sidewalk, a balding man blinked and rubbed his eyes, then peered at me and at the dark area I had just vacated, apparently unable to convince himself that I had been standing there all along before I started moving across the street. He didn't actually try to speak to me, so I let him draw whatever conclusions he would.

A bell tinkled as I went through the front door, but no one overtly reacted to my presence. A clerk was at the cash register, selling something bound in black leather to a dark-skinned woman. A towheaded lad was peering at an assortment of old science fiction and fantasy paperbacks. As I moved further back between rows of shelving, I noticed an auburn-haired woman in a green ensemble was standing near a sign that proclaimed those shelves to be the "New Age" section. As I passed behind her back, I heard her softly humming something that sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place it right away.

A minute later, as I was peering dubiously at a book that purported to offer the truth about the Metaphysical Role of Count Saint Germain in 18th Century Europe (it might be worth buying for the amusement value, given that I had actually known Saint Germain back in the day) the auburn-haired woman turned around and, out of the corner of my eye, I suddenly realized that her profile was a remarkably good match for that of the auburn-haired woman who had been holding a _soi-disant_ edition of _The Necronomicon_ a few minutes ago in Metropolis. And hadn't that woman _also_ been wearing a dark green sweater, with slacks, boots, and purse all of the same color?

My life is full of synchronicity. For example, some have suggested I deliberately wait as long as it takes for certain individuals to use the word "stranger" in a sentence before I "just happen" to wander into their field of vision and start talking to them, but those claims are . . . well, not _entirely_ false, but greatly _exaggerated_. More often than my critics would believe, such a "coincidence" was entirely unplanned (_by me_, at least). It was possible that these two auburn-haired, green-clad young women were entirely unconnected with one another. Or they were identical twins who lived in different towns. Or . . . too many possibilities, and my enhanced perceptions weren't helping much in narrowing them down, thus far.

The balderdash about Saint Germain could wait. An experiment was in order. I left the store in the conventional fashion, then cut across a parking lot. When I was shrouded in shadow in the narrow gap between two minivans, I _sidestepped _to Opal City, just down the street from a shop of antiques and collectibles run by a young man named Jack Knight. (A mile away, his brother David was continuing the proud tradition of "Starman" in an encounter with some car thieves.)

I window shopped for a minute, waiting. An auburn-haired young woman sauntered down the sidewalk, whistling an old tune. (Need I mention her wardrobe was green?) She passed me by without a word and faded away into thin air as she passed under a street lamp. The synchronicity hypothesis promptly collapsed. A moment later I was twenty feet behind her as she entered a Wal-Mart in Columbus. I trailed her through the store for a few minutes. She paused by a magazine display, leafed through a fashion magazine for a minute, then replaced it neatly on the rack and faded again.

I followed her trail to a large bookstore in Hub City. I could have emerged directly in front of her, but there was no clear need to force the issue. It was possible that she was leading me into a trap, but I do not turn tail and run every time a mystic wants my attention; I should never get anything done that way. Still, if something interesting didn't develop soon I would probably shrug this off and leave her to continue her shopping spree alone.

Naturally, that was when she broke pattern, as if to say "here's my message; what do you make of it?" I stood directly behind her at the sales counter as she put down a load of science fiction novels she had plucked off the shelves as she moved toward the front of the store.

Her selections included:

Robert A. Heinlein's _Methuselah's Children.  
_Roger Zelazny's _This Immortal_.  
Poul Anderson's _The Boat of a Million Years._  
Edgar Rice Burroughs' _A Princess of Mars._  
Larry Niven's _Protector._

Each and every one of them a tale involving physical "immortality" (or at least vastly extended life expectancy) in some fashion. Was that what she wished to discuss with me? Her agenda was still an open question. Even at such close range, her mind was mystically shielded against any casual probe (as I was now verifying). It was conceivable (but far from certain) that I could breach her defenses if I tried hard enough, but it would be very rude to try and possibly risky. I purchased a copy of _Silverlock_, by John Myers Myers, as an excuse for my being just behind her at the sales counter.

She lingered near the doorway until I had made my purchase, then sauntered out, me following. It occurred to me that given how little I knew about her, I really had nothing I needed to say to her. The Phantom Stranger does not lower himself to ask other strangers why they are trying to attract his attention. I seriously considered cutting this off by _sidestepping_ several times in quick succession and finding something else to do with my evening. Speculating about her motives had been entertaining for a few minutes, but I didn't want to make a career out of it. Perhaps she sensed that my interest was wearing thin.

Without preamble, without even looking back at me over her shoulder, she said casually, "You don't have a listed mailing address. I suppose I could have sent something to the Justice League—you used to call yourself a member of a previous version of the group—but I didn't know how often you stopped by to pick up your messages at the current team's headquarters."

"Never," I conceded as I stepped up to stand beside her. Neither her voice, nor face, nor what I could detect of her basic psychic aura (despite the shielding) rang any bells in my memory. I was reasonably certain that she _was_ wearing her _own_ face, however. Her psychic shields—products of spellcasting rather than of "natural" telepathy or technological enhancement—prevented me from even ferreting out her name, as I can almost always do without much effort at such close range. The most plausible explanation was that she was just as young as she looked—early-to-mid-twenties—which probably meant she was only newly operating as a solo act with her full power after a long apprenticeship with someone else. If she had been operating independently for any great length of time, I very likely would have recognized her from past experience.

This auburn-haired sorceress, on the other hand, obviously knew "who" I was - at least in the most general sense. To rub it in, she had earlier been humming (I now realized) the old tune, "Strangers in the Night." A song of love at first sight, as I recalled—was she hoping for a quick fling so that she could boast about a tryst with the elusive Phantom Stranger?

(She was attractive enough, but it _wasn't_ going to happen - the tryst, that is. Even supposing it was really her objective. On the other hand, I doubted I would take the trouble to try to refute her if she later started bragging about one _anyway_. Such things had certainly happened before. I'd long since concluded that the stranger and more contradictory the rumors that spread about my lifestyle in mystic circles, the better. But I was probably getting far ahead of myself. Still, following this chain of speculation gave me something to do while I waited for her to get to the point—I was disinclined to play straight man by feeding her a series of questions, as if I were hanging on her every word.)

She asked the first question. "Any thoughts on why I went looking for you, Stranger? If it turns out you already know, it'll save me an awful lot of explaining!" She grinned engagingly.

"I am sure you already know I cannot easily read your mind. Your taste in reading matter suggests an interest in immortality."

"No; more of an interest in attracting your attention by waving an intriguing theme under your nose," she assured me. "I've read all these books, years ago. And watched the Highlander movies, to boot. And lately the 'Highlander' TV series that just started last fall. But there are plenty of other ways to approach the problem of immortality, without trying to steal _yours_. Even supposing I could, which I don't know for sure and don't propose to test."

"Indeed?"

"Immortals are a dime a dozen," she said dismissively. "Ponce de Leon may never have found his Fountain of Youth, but there are plenty of others who have mastered the trick somehow. Cheating death, postponing it for millennia, returning from it good as new, switching bodies, a bunch of different answers to the same old question. Vandal Savage, Ra's al Ghul, Solomon Grundy, the Resurrection Man, Arion of Atlantis, the Shade, Hawkman and Hawkgirl if we count good old-fashioned reincarnation, various 'artificial intelligences' who are still young in years but might last millennia if the tech base doesn't collapse, mythological entities a-plenty in every corner of the world -- and that's just some of the ones who spend most of their time on and around this little old planet instead of hanging out on New Genesis or Oa or places I've never heard of." As she spoke, we had taken seven-league strides, side by side for the moment, and were now in the suburbs of Chicago.

She carried on with her discourse. "And I haven't even mentioned the ghosts whose bodies are moldering in the grave but whose spirits continue to play an active role in the world of the living, such as Boston Brand or Gentleman Jim Craddock. Nor the clones with the memories of the originals—Project Cadmus has done that with Jim Harper, so I know it's a perfectly feasible approach to gain Reincarnation On Demand. Someday I may even try it. The old brain in the old body would still experience death eventually, but the copy of my psyche that had been downloaded to the clone-brain wouldn't remember or care about the final trauma it hadn't experienced, would it?" We had detoured through Gateway City, Oklahoma City, and Fawcett City, and were now pausing in Happy Harbor. She was still carrying the conversation, such as it was.

She waved a hand dismissively as she added, "Hey, if I just wanted immortality in a hurry and all else failed, I'd capture a vampire and force him to turn me into one of his own. Simpler than trying to compete with Ra's in the Lazarus Pit business. And I'm bright enough to avoid leaving a trail of dead bodies, drained of all blood, twin punctures visible on the neck. If you believe the movies, that would be a surefire way to attract the attention of vampire hunters every time, which would be a pain even if I _weren't_ moronic enough to leave behind eyewitnesses and/or enough other clues for them to go the distance by getting a good _description_ and tracking me all the way back to my lair - instead of just scratching their heads and saying, 'Gee, somewhere in this metropolitan area, concealed among millions of ordinary residents, there must be a vampire!' No, I'd probably just start doing all my grocery shopping at the local blood bank through a dummy corporation disguised as a private clinic or research lab."

_And if you did hunt and kill for sustenance, you'd make sure the bodies were never found—or were so badly burnt that no autopsy would ever ascertain that they had been exsanguinated before entering the fire_, I concluded silently. Her casual willingness to share her stream-of-consciousness ideas on immortality only went so far; she obviously had no intention of baring her soul to me regarding any major sin she _actually_ anticipated committing.

She continued along the same lines, postponing the moment when she would mention why she had started bird-dogging me in the first place. "Of course, I'd either have to sleep all day or else get used to smearing on the sun block really thick before I went out."

"Sun block would not avail you much—it's not a scientific problem of how much ultraviolet radiation actually penetrates your flesh."

"Figures. But I wasn't really interested in doing it that way."

Meanwhile, we had stridden in and out of Tulsa, Philadelphia, Lansing, Keystone City, and now entered Colorado Springs. I still didn't know exactly how she was doing it—not the same way _I_ do it, for a certainty, but neither by going through the necessary steps to use any of the traditional spells that would be well-suited to a series of rapid teleportations (or the functional equivalent). Perhaps some artifact on her person that had been bespelled and charged with power in advance, so it could do most of the work without demanding much of her attention as we went along?

I finally decided asking one leading question wouldn't kill me. "Then what are you interested in? More than a quiet transcontinental stroll in my company, I presume."

She stopped in a state park just outside Indianapolis. "Have you ever heard of the Dark Chamber?"

I chewed on that. "Was there not a novel by that name, several decades ago?"

"If you say so—I wouldn't know. But I meant it as the name of a contemporary outfit; not anything fictional or defunct."

"Something on the mystical side of things?"

"Absolutely."

"I do not recall ever encountering such a group, then." _And my memory for such things is very long and very reliable_, I didn't bother to add.

At the moment, we were walking normally down a trail through the woods and about to pass a swarthy man who had his hands stuffed in his pockets and was staring at a burbling creek. There was a green flower in his buttonhole.

"Then—" she broke off. "Wait. Before I say anything more specific . . ." Suddenly she waved a hand in an elaborate gesture and a glowing circle seemed to spring out of the ground all around us, roughly thirty feet in diameter. The swarthy man was caught just inside the rim; he expostulated and jumped back from it—he was now trapped inside the circle with the two of us; or he seemed to view it that way.

I didn't. I could see at a glance that the circle should serve as a baffle to frustrate any outside attempts to hear our conversation by means technological or magical; but had no heat or other potency that would give a man as much as a blister if he physically stepped over and away from it. Granted, a layman could be pardoned for failing to perceive such distinctions, but I knew this was more childish showmanship than anything else. "Just my companion's little joke, sir!" I assured the swarthy man. "You are free to walk away whenever you please!"

The man stared at the glowing perimeter and reached up nervously toward his throat, as if to loosen his tie and facilitate breathing. "Really? If it's so safe, you go first! Show me!"

"Why not?" I conceded. "Watch—"

I was interrupted as the auburn-haired woman raised and then lowered her right hand, twice. Two more glowing circles appeared, centered on our position, each wider than the previous—ergo, I was now standing at the center of a bullseye, if you cared to look at it that way. I didn't care for the notion at all. I still saw no true threat within those flamboyant circles, no hostile magic looming overhead, no hint of demonic activity—it was quite possible that she merely valued her privacy and had something explosive to tell me—but I suddenly grabbed the swarthy man by the left arm and prepared to take us elsewhere if need be. "Do not move," I advised him. "In just a moment -"

The sorceress had begun chanting something that, to the best of my knowledge, was not the verbal component of any spell under the sun. Familiar, though.

"_Weave a circle round him thrice  
And close your eyes with holy dread  
For he on honey-dew hath fed  
And drunk the milk of Paradise._"

"Coleridge?" I inquired, more amused than anything else. "Is that really—"

I was interrupted as the swarthy gentleman touched the flower in his buttonhole and a clear liquid spurted out of the blossom—into my open mouth at point-blank range. The Phantom Stranger requires neither food nor drink for sustenance, but my mouth still connects to my gullet, which still connects to the stomach that I almost never use. Some of the liquid followed that path down into my digestive system before I understood what was happening. It was neither honey-dew nor the milk of paradise, but it made a unique impact.

I clamped my lips shut, loosened my grip on the man's arm,and tried to _sidestep_ a thousand miles to the west—but I had suddenly forgotten how! I was still grappling with that discovery when the swarthy man's hand chopped at my neck.

_Oblivion_.


	2. Chapter 2: Exploring the Prison

**Chapter 2: Exploring the Prison**

Something soft against my cheek, and I was in a prone position, and my eyes were closed, and somewhere in the background a radio or other device was playing "Stranger in My Own Home Town," and _instinct_ told me to jump up and look about me instantly, but _reason_ overrode instinct by pointing out that I'd probably been lying here for quite some time already and nothing too terrible had happened yet, and it might be best to avoid attracting attention for at least a few more minutes while I tried to remember why I was suddenly waking up, because I don't sleep in the first place, not in the normal sense!

I searched my memory and remembered an auburn-haired sorceress who led me criss-crossing a continent, apparently at random, until we just happened to pass near a swarthy man on a trail in a park. An ambush, of course—hindsight is always so much clearer on these things. Flaunting her power, with psychic shields to hide her intent and make me wonder, she had flamboyantly kept my attention focused upon herself while I disregarded the man as just another mortal bystander until he was within range to spring the _real_ trap. He was no sorcerer, I was sure—but he had been armed with something that did very peculiar things to me. Not painful, but unsettling. Even disorienting; as near as I could recall from the moments before he seized the opportunity to render me unconscious.

In those last few moments, I had tried to _sidestep_ to Utah to shake them off, and nothing had happened. Why not? S_idestepping_ was no great trick; I could do it a thousand times a day. I simply—

Simply—

This was ridiculous. It was merely a question of concentrating upon—

Or perhaps focusing my—

My what?

I had _forgotten_. Opening my eyes: A gray stone wall a few inches in front of them. Twist head a little, look straight up: the wall extended to meet a stone ceiling several feet overhead. Hasty self-diagnosis: vision clear, no headache to speak of, no ringing in my ears, confusion but not nausea, no sense of slowly emerging from a stupor; hence, little chance of concussion. No feverish feeling either. Breathing freely. I wasn't about to get up and walk around yet—but I didn't anticipate any real problems in that department. I didn't feel I was _physically_ injured in any significant way. That left the realm of the mind and the spirit.

A particularly powerful and gifted sorceress _might_—conceivably—have been able to work very hard during my unconsciousness to somehow implant mental blocks to prevent me from accessing my ability to travel quickly to distant places—but I believed it _should_ have taken considerable time to work past my defenses by such means if it worked at all, and the problem had begun when I was wide awake, _immediately_ after her confederate sprayed something into my mouth, and _before_ she had the chance to cast any elaborate spells against me.

Ergo, that clear liquid I had inadvertently swallowed was the key to the puzzle. The sorceress's entire purpose had been to maneuver me into position for that attack to blindside me. Anything she had _subsequently_ done was just icing on the cake, I suspected.

_Analyze its effects, Phantom Stranger!_ Not poison in the conventional sense or I should have noticed other symptoms by now. Something that had drained me of mystical energy, severed my ties to other power sources?

Harder to say. But I didn't feel as _empty_ as I thought I would if my connections to power sources had been completely severed, like pulling the plug on a powerful machine.

_(And what are those sources, Stranger? Do you draw upon a single great external source for your true power, or is it entirely inherent within your own being if you just know how to focus it, or do you have a variety of ways to access and channel different flavors of power as required, depending upon what best suits the circumstances?)_

Excellent questions! The _answers_ had fled from my mind.

_Answers._ A pattern was beginning to emerge. Whatever power I normally used might still be there for all I knew (wherever "there" was) - but I couldn't remember anything specific about what do with it. Source? Nature? Operating methods? I thought I still remembered the effects I could achieve in a normal day's work, but not how I had achieved them.

I also knew I had routinely been making use of my unusual abilities for a very long time—but I was hard put to name a figure. What were the oldest things I could remember? Several images of scenes from the Roman Empire (and other, contemporary civilizations) sprang to mind as quickly as I phrased the mental question—but I wasn't sure if those were the oldest things my memory ought to have in storage. How much further back did my memories go? How much further were they supposed to go?

I was the Phantom Stranger, and now even I did not know what that meant.

Someone had turned a hole in the wall into a cell. Sturdy vertical bars about six inches apart sealed off the front. The floor, ceiling, and three walls were natural rock. (Living rock?). The floor space was rectangular, about twenty feet by thirty, the ceiling roughly ten feet high. The cell contained a dark green plastic chair all cast of one piece, a sink, a toilet, and a cardboard box with some books and magazines in it—and that box was on top of another box, lid still on, contents unknown. Also one rather bewildered Stranger, of course—lying on what I thought was a cot. I finally sat up. Yes, it was a perfectly ordinary-looking cot. My head had been resting on a pillow.

Visual self-examination: Still wearing most of my clothes. Turtleneck, trousers, shoes, socks, even underwear when I thought to check. My cape was hanging on the back of the plastic chair, and my hat was resting on the seat.

Visual sweep through the bars: This cell was one pocket attached to a much larger cavern. Sitting at some sort of computer, about fifty feet away, his left profile toward me, was the swarthy man who had sprayed a clear liquid into my mouth and somehow—_hold that thought. Let it rest awhile. Continue taking inventory of the environment._ The computer he was working at was on a very large, very crowded table, and cables and things connected it to some much larger equipment several feet away. Not my field of expertise. Something else on that table was still playing Elvis Presley recordings. The swarthy man was typing very quickly.

The man wore a shoulder holster. From the look of the butt, I deduced it was some sort of semiautomatic handgun. I knew the difference between a semiautomatic and a revolver, but I had no memory of ever feeling the need to study the subject any further. (Not that my memory was as reliable as it used to be.)

The man soon became aware of my changed position and swiveled ninety degrees on his chair to face me. He arose to his feet, but did not speak immediately; he was watching my face. When my eyes had swept back and forth across all of the cavern that I could see for at least the third time, he asked conversationally, "Looking for anything in particular?"

"Bamboo slivers, red-hot irons, Iron Maidens, hypodermics, Judas chairs, whips, flails, thumbscrews, or perhaps a bucket with a tiny hole in the base."

He squinted at me. "A leaky bucket?"

"For 'Chinese' water torture," I explained.

"Ah, of course. Well, I hate to disappoint you, but we have so little interest in interrogating you that we didn't even bother to invest in a polygraph. Not even an ordinary civilian model, much less one with the option of giving the subject nasty electrical shocks if he persists in lying." As he spoke, he had been striding toward my cell, stopping at least ten feet away. He was no longer wearing the business suit I'd seen in the ambush in the park; but rather what looked like some sort of military camouflage fatigues. His facial features - the cheekbones, the thick lips, the heavy-lidded eyes, and so forth - gave him a rather Mayan look, although his English sounded Texan. Descended from Mexican or Guatemalan immigrants, perhaps? Normally I would have known his name by now, but instead it was the best I could do to barely sense some combination of amusement and nervousness in him; amusement dominating.

Fleetingly, it occurred to me that I had no idea how well a polygraph would do at reading _my_ metabolism—had I ever known?—but apparently that would remain an academic point.

I disdained the cliché of asking _Where am I?—_it seemed likely he would not tell me anything more substantial than "in our secret base"—and moved on to other things. "Then how long a stay should I anticipate?"

He smiled broadly. "Oh, perhaps a month or two. An immortal should be able to do that standing on his head!"

"And then?"

He shrugged. "Then we leave. When we're a reasonable distance away I transmit the signal that will open the door and turn you loose."

_We? Does he just mean himself and the sorceress, or a much larger organization, or what? _I filed that question away—he seemed willing to talk about my own circumstances, but I doubted he would provide me with a Table of Organization and Equipment for whatever group had captured me.

Perhaps I looked skeptical at the bland assurance that I would be turned loose unharmed. He added pointedly, "If we _needed_ you dead, we already had our best chance while you were unconscious. But instead, we will settle for keeping you safely out of the way for awhile. After that, you can go back to meddling in mortal affairs all you like—and if you come looking for us at that point, we'll take our chances!"

I normally have a keen ear for falsehood—and I didn't get any sense that he was telling a direct lie - but I didn't trust my own perceptions right now. Or he might sincerely believe what he was saying—but the auburn-haired sorceress or someone else might be planning a very different fate for me, without having advised him of that fact!

The apparent "logic" of his reassurance was not airtight. I tried to review the full list of all the evil spells and rituals I know that require the sacrifice of a sentient being—but only at a _certain_ time on a _certain_ day to achieve the proper effect; not just whenever you happen to feel like it. In my current condition I thought I could only remember seven, but I suspected the full list would be much longer. Despite his glib promises, the swarthy man and the auburn-haired sorceress (his employer? Servant? Lover? Fellow cultist?) might be intending to keep me alive and well only until the time was ripe for me to become the central feature of a special ceremony.

"What have you done to me?"

"Taken away pieces of your memory!" he said helpfully, telling me nothing I hadn't already noticed on my own. "I'm not sure just how much. We worked on the theory that our approach would severely impede the use of your powers—as a side effect. Given that you're still in that cell, I'd say we got it right."

"I meant something more specific - how did you do it?"

"I knew what you meant," he assured me. "But you don't Need to Know that information. There is so much we don't understand about your powers and metabolism—I don't know the odds, but it's quite _possible_ that possessing detailed information would let you orchestrate your own recovery much faster than we'd like."

"Then you expect me to recover?"

"You're immortal, and you haven't been _physically_ harmed. You must have advanced 'healing mechanisms' to deal with bizarre, nonfatal setbacks, given time. I refuse to believe that this is the first time in however-many-centuries-you've-been-alive that you've had to deal with what we might call, _loosely_, severe psychic or psychological injury. Obviously you were able to function again in the long run."

"If anything roughly equivalent to my current condition has ever been inflicted upon me before, _I don't recall it_," I said drily (and honestly).

He shrugged. "That's pretty much the effect we were aiming for. I figure it will all come back to you. I really have no idea what the 'natural' timeframe should be for your recovery, but I fully expect you to make one. _Eventually._ Perhaps in a long series of small steps. Perhaps accelerating the process with help from others once you're out of here. A year, a decade, a century, who knows?"

The sound of footsteps on the stone floor, and the auburn-haired sorceress strode into view, wearing hiking shoes, blue jeans, and a loose, long-sleeved checked shirt - different shades of blue and white in it. The swarthy man smiled as he turned his head and saw her; I gathered there was a certain fondness there.

"How is he?"

"He hasn't mentioned any aches and pains," the man assured her. "Perfectly coherent. Asking lots of questions—I've _told_ him we only want to temporarily immobilize him, and then turn him loose to fend for himself in due time—but I'm not sure he believes me. I probably wouldn't if I were on the other side of the bars."

She smiled slightly. "Perhaps it would be more sociable of us to introduce ourselves to our . . . unwilling guest. A token gesture of our esteem for him, despite current differences of opinion?"

He frowned. "Seems an unnecessary risk. I don't know how good he'll be at tracking people down _right after_ we turn him loose, but I'd rather not pave the way for him."

"First names only - enough to let him have something to call us besides 'Hey, you!'"

"But -"

She turned and looked me in the eye. (Her own eyes were a pale blue-gray.) "I am Zinerva." She looked back at her associate and raised an eyebrow expectantly.

"Yes, mother," he said resignedly. I blinked before I realized it was irony; he actually looked at least a few years older than she, and probably was. He looked over at me and said flatly, "Call me Arlo; everyone does." He obviously didn't like saying it, but then she smiled warmly at his cooperation and he perked up again. I had been wondering about the pecking order in their organization - at the moment, Zinerva _appeared_ to be dominant; but Arlo's general tone toward her was not that of a lackey reporting to a lofty superior in a rigid, class-conscious hierarchy; nor did I get the feeling that he was _afraid_ of her.

It was quite possible that there were other subjects where she would yield to his judgment as quickly as he had yielded to hers. Far too soon to reach any conclusions about their chain of command.

Zinerva studied my cell through the bars (never coming within arm's reach, I noticed) and addressed me. "One of those boxes has various hygienic items that you might or might not need. Soap, toothpaste, shampoo, laundry detergent, that sort of thing. You can wash your clothes in the sink if they get too dirty - we _weren't sure_ if such things would be a problem with your memory gone. You'll find some towels and extra blankets beneath your cot if you ever need them."

A new thought occurred to me and I glanced at my cape, which I had not even touched since awakening in the cell. Both of them caught it. Arlo spoke first.

"Zinerva went over your clothes with a fine-toothed comb, sorcerously speaking, while you were still out cold. Just to be on the safe side, she had to confiscate several items, but she said the cape itself was nothing inherently dangerous. Me, I half-expected her to find you kept a Colt .45 handy for those nasty little emergencies where magic just won't cut it!"

I winced at the thought without even knowing why, even as I simultaneously wondered just what school of magic Zinerva's teacher had concentrated upon. Visions of hexagrams and pentacles danced in my head for a moment. It might - somehow - make a difference in what she had detected and what she had guarded against. Meanwhile, Zinerva was speaking again. "The other box has some miscellaneous reading material if you get bored. We'll check up on you, every once in awhile - if you think there's something else you need, we're willing to give it reasonable consideration. You'll find it's _much easier_ for us to toss things in through the bars than it is for you to do the reverse," she added sweetly (just in case I had been pondering the idea of requesting ingredients that could theoretically be used to make my very own slingshot or crossbow or poisoned darts, I supposed).

She added, "I've always understood that you don't require food or drink. If it turns out that's no longer valid, say something. Anyway, you can always drink from the tap of the sink if you get thirsty between our visits. Any questions right now?"

I looked over at the far corner of my cell. "Why the toilet? I never need them."

Arlo shrugged. "We'd heard that—but we could have heard wrong. Besides, we didn't build that cell _exclusively_ for you. One never knows when it might be necessary to incarcerate someone in a good cause. Most prisoners would be grateful for sanitary facilities."

"Understandable," I conceded, forbearing to argue the point of whether or not prisoners should properly be "grateful" for little kindnesses from their abductors.

They soon made their excuses (scarcely necessary, but I had the strange feeling they were trying to be moderately polite in spite of the awkward situation) and vanished from my line of sight by simply walking away to my left. I was certain I once could have tracked them a considerable distance with enhanced perceptions - but not today.

I was just as glad they were gone. The conversation with Arlo and Zinerva, and particularly the sort of recollections different points did or didn't trigger in my own skull, had given me the first _glimmering_ of an idea that might actually serve to get me out of captivity. Given the condition of my memory, it would probably turn out to be a fiasco with flaws I simply wouldn't perceive until it was too late, but what did I have to lose?

I needed to examine my cloak. I needed to examine whatever else they had left for my comfort. I needed to meditate at length to determine how much I still remembered about the arcane arts. Then I needed to make some nail-biting tactical decisions before I actually _did_ anything.


	3. Chapter 3: Testing the Limits

**Chapter 3: Testing the Limits**

Zinerva and Arlo were excellent jailors. Three days had gone by and they had made no effort to harm me beyond what they had already done to my memory. Hunger and thirst did not assail me. Granted, they were dealing with a prisoner who required neither food nor drink—but they were willing to provide a range of dishes, they made clear. (Mostly the sort of thing that could be easily purchased in packages and then heated up in a microwave oven, however—either neither of them was a versatile cook or else they simply felt elaborate efforts in the kitchen would require more time than they could spare.)

I had studied their schedules as best I could. Arlo often spent several hours at a stretch tapping away on one of his computers, doing things he never discussed. Zinerva would usually wander in and out of my field of vision for brief intervals during those times, presumably on her way to and from whatever her own duties were in their odd alliance. Then there would be long stretches when there was no sign of either of them. One of those stretches had begun perhaps two hours ago, and I had decided it was as good a time as any to make my bid for freedom. The bid required at least several minutes of privacy; principally because I had to draw lines on the floor without being interrupted.

There had been a black Magic Marker gathering dust in a pocket of my cape for years and now it might come in handy again. Not as good as chalk, but I thought it would do. (Zinerva must have tested it carefully for magic, found none, and concluded it was harmless. She was almost right.)

After spending most of my time sitting motionless and ransacking my memory to try to make sense of what I still remembered from a very long life of mystic adventures, I was _provisionally_ working on the theory that if I went through all the proper steps a mortal sorcerer working from books might use to invoke one of the Great Forces, I would be able to access my own internal power—or a strong source of external power—or whatever it was that my operations normally accessed. Even though I would not be reaching out for it by whatever means I normally employed. Or perhaps I would only touch some other external power source that I had never actually needed to touch before. I was in no condition to be picky—any Force that could activate a spell to carry me away would be acceptable.

To the best of my damaged recollection, I had never employed any variation of the travel spell oft known as Portnoy's Penultimate Portal. Never needed to. I strongly suspected that this lack of practical experience was precisely why I remembered enough about it to let me recreate the necessary conditions now.

If only I could remember how to aim the silly thing. Something else I was fairly sure I had never done before. No telling whence it would carry me.

Ah well. It couldn't be that much worse than my current circumstances, could it?

I paused to think that over for a moment. I was alive, able-bodied, well-fed (if it had mattered), not suffering from excessive cold or damp—I stopped that line of thought before I might convince myself to sit and wait a while longer. Arlo and Zinerva might very well mean to turn me loose after they completed their own short-term agenda, but the very fact of my imprisonment strongly suggested it was an agenda I could never tamely accept.

I uncapped the Magic Marker and moved to the center of my cell. I had never drawn a pentacle in my life, except possibly for amusement. Or I didn't think I had. My huge lack of any need for them in the past was presumably why I remembered how to draw one now, when so much else had fled from me. The lines formed swiftly as I swiped the marker around my own position.

Was it really necessary to place burning candles at each point of the star, or was that just a symbol? (Although my memories were incomplete, I had the nasty feeling that, in magic ritual, the line between "practical necessity" and "traditional symbol" can become extremely _blurred_.) However, my lack of candles made the decision for me. I completed the pentacle and seated myself at the very center, and began to recite the words in an ancient language no mundane scholar at Oxford or Harvard would be able to positively identify.

Whatever my captors had used on me, it had a very specialized effect—I thought. Possibly too specialized. As near as I could tell, I had not forgotten everything I ever knew about magic—only everything I had ever put to practical use!

Consider: A modern chemist might know the formula for mixing up a fresh batch of black gunpowder in an emergency, even though he had never in his life found it necessary to do so. There are so many other, more powerful, explosive formulae known to modern science. Nonetheless, if trapped on a remote island and facing a large problem that required explosive power to solve, that chemist would be sitting pretty if he could find supplies of sulphur and saltpeter and could burn wood to produce charcoal.

My situation was a parallel to that, except substituting "magic" for "science" and noting that I didn't even have the resources of an entire island to draw upon. Just what I could scrounge up in my cell. On the other hand, I had walked shadowy paths for centuries (millennia? Eons?) and I apparently remembered quite a bit about things that I had never actually put into practice; methods that I had observed other thaumaturges employing. There are many different "schools" or "varieties" of magic and I have encountered practitioners of _all_ of them on various occasions!

While I went through the logic again in my head, my lips had almost finished the chant. Now I had to specify a direction. In theory, I thought the wisest thing to do would have been to "aim" for a specific mage's pentacle. Rather like dialing a telephone number to create a long-distance connection. And if I could remember how to aim the spell properly, and if I could remember the "home number" of any old allies, I might _actually_ have tried it that way. But since neither of those circumstances pertained . . . I would have to name a point of the compass and hope that somewhere in that _general_ direction, on or near the surface of Mother Earth, there was a pentacle—properly drawn, suitable for use with this spell, currently unoccupied, and accessible from the outside. I would further have to pray that its owner was reasonably benign, or at least _not_ reflexively inimical, toward a wayward Phantom Stranger who might arrive within a mage's sanctum, partially amnesiac and ill-prepared to defend himself against an angry assault upon a "trespasser." Not the wisest gamble imaginable in this world, but there is that within me which _must not_ remain caged . . .

"_Hallarkh Mnihr!_" I cried out, the words for "North" and "West" in that ancient tongue, and then I was surrounded by something spinning around the outside of the pentacle, something tall, fluid, flickering, blurred, unsteady, as if I were at the center of a great waterspout. My body felt no motion, but the thing around me seemed to spin faster and faster, colors changing more wildly, until suddenly I was seated upon a large Oriental rug (done in a style popular in portions of East Turkestan two centuries agone, I thought) with a pentacle woven into it. The room was dark, save for some light visible through a doorway on my left.

I turned my head in that direction and froze as my eyes met those of a crouching leopard staring back at me. It neither growled nor attacked, but was clearly ready to move quickly. I, sitting in lotus position on the rug, was in no position to quickly evade.

So I didn't even try. "Hello, Brother Leopard," I said politely.

The leopard did growl then, and I soon heard footsteps approaching from somewhere beyond the doorway behind the leopard. A shadow preceded the person coming down the hall. A man's voice said, in cultured tones with just a trace of some odd accent to his English, "Fee fie foe fum! Do I smell the blood of an Englishman?"

That voice, that leopard, that odd sense of humor . . . _No. _

_No, no, no! Not Wintersgate Manor. Not _Baron Winters!

* * *

**Author's Note**: The spell known as Portnoy's Penultimate Portal has only been previously mentioned in a single comic book story from DC, to the best of my (limited and fallible) knowledge. First person to correctly identify the exact comic book in which it was first referenced, in a review or a PM to Lorendiac, wins a great reward: A hearty handshake from yours truly if we ever happen to bump into each other in real life! (Generous to a fault; that's me!) 


	4. Chapter 4: Facing the Baron

**Chapter Four: Facing the Baron**

Iron-gray hair and goatee; a jutting nose; a white cloak that covered his back and included sleeves for his arms, but was never designed to cover the front of his body; I could see the more modern blue suit he wore beneath the white overgarment. One hand rested lightly on the ornate head of an old-fashioned walking stick. Baron Winters stood in the doorway, head cocked slightly as he studied me while I carefully rose to my feet—was reasonably certain the leopard would not attack now that the master of the house was here to make the big decisions about an intruder.

"This," the Baron said deliberately, "should teach me the risks of watching Hitchcock's _Strangers on a Train_ on cable. One might think I'd know better at my age, even if it had been forty years since I last viewed it. The next thing I know, here you are, under my roof without so much as giving me an hour's advance notice so I could tidy up a bit!" His steely eyes were fixed on mine as he waited for my explanation.

I had to make a decision, and it had to be swift. I could either tell the Baron the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth . . . or I could attempt to bluff my way out of here without admitting I was only a shadow of my former self where matters preternatural were concerned. The very worst thing I could do would be to take more than a second to decide how to speak; the Baron would smell such indecision, and sense the weakness behind it, as surely as a shark smells a single drop of blood.

There were some mystics I would certainly trust with such information if I desperately needed aid . . . but the Baron was not numbered among those select few. There were others I could never trust with anything . . . and to do him justice, I didn't consider the Baron to have firmly staked out a position for himself on that list either. The ambiguity of the man's nature put him somewhere in the middle.

Ah well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. "Hello, Winters. I need some help."

His eyes narrowed. "Shouldn't you wrap it up in the usual mumbo-jumbo, Stranger?" His voice shifted to an exaggeratedly ominous tone. "'Greetings, Winters—the game is afoot! You have a rare opportunity to tilt the karmic scales in the proper direction if you choose wisely'?" His voice reverted to a calmer, slightly mocking tone. "Some such rigmarole to make it sound as if _you _are doing _me_ a favor by offering to let me participate in your weighty affairs—instead of _asking_ for a favor, even if you are?"

I allowed my lips to form a fleeting smile. "Greetings, Winters. The game is afoot. You have a rare opportunity to tilt the karmic scales in the proper direction if you choose wisely." I shrugged theatrically. "Do you feel better, now that I have dressed it up properly?"

The Baron suddenly raised his stick as if it were a rapier and pointed it at my chest. "Suddenly I question whether you are the Phantom Stranger at all. Since when does he use a conventional traveling spell—Portnoy's Penultimate Portal, if I have not forgotten the flavor of its lingering aura from my old lessons—to enter a man's home? Since when does he need a properly prepared pentacle to receive him? And since when does he start out a conversation by plainly asking me for help? We've never had that close a relationship!"

I did not hear the leopard say (or growl) a single thing, but the Baron suddenly snapped, "Enough, Merlin! So he _smells_ like the Phantom Stranger! What of it? Noses may be deceived as surely as eyes often are!" He paused, then added peevishly, "No, offhand I don't recall the last time that _your_ nose was thus deceived, but what does that prove?"

"If I could get a word in, Baron," I interjected, "then I could explain some of what baffles you. After an odd attack from a sorceress and her confederate, I have lost some of my usual abilities and lore, and had to resort to Portnoy's, a spell I think I had never actually performed ere today, to carry me out of confinement." (The presence of Merlin had something to do with my decision to be frank—I doubted he would just sit back on his haunches and let the Baron attempt to kill or enthrall me without provocation.)

"Ah?" The Baron looked at me in frank speculation. "Then just how much aid do you require, Stranger? You recall, I trust, that in this era I am _bound_ to remain within the walls of this manse? But I still have contacts hither and yon, and perhaps I could rally a new Night Force to assist with any necessary legwork in finding your vexatious sorceress." He raised his eyebrows significantly. "For proper compensation, of course."

I paused. I had not known just where the spell would take me; hence, I had no detailed agenda for what to do next. "I should hate to put you to so much trouble, Baron, but if you could simply arrange transport for me to wherever Kent and Inza Nelson currently have their abode. . . ."

"Of course Doctor Fate would be your _first _choice for succor. Ah, well, my offer will remain open for awhile if you should discover a need for mortal field agents. Now, if we can merely settle—" He broke off suddenly.

There was a light step in the hall, and a young woman's voice came through the doorway. "Baron? I finally got all the documents from the thirteenth box computer-indexed . . .but as to shelving the transcripts of the Akashic Recordings, do you want them clumped together under 'A for Akashic,' or shelved according to the names of individual authors?"

"Keep them all together under 'A,' Miss Jones," the Baron said at his most urbane as a young lady with a pale face framed by brown ringlets came into view. "But first, pray let me present you to an old . . . acquaintance . . . who dropped in out of thin air, as it were. Phantom Stranger, this is Miss Alice Jones, who is working wonders in organizing my messy collection of dusty records of past investigations and other matters of interest into something resembling a proper library. Miss Jones, this mysterious gentleman styles himself the Phantom Stranger . . . or just plain Stranger for short. As hard as it may be to believe, he is even older than my humble self!"

"Aren't we all much older than we look?" she asked absently as she stepped daintily forward to face me. "How do you do, sir."

I bowed slightly. "I am well enough, Miss Jones. And yourself?" I normally have little time for small talk, but I suspected the Baron would prove obdurate if I failed to cooperate with his formal introductions.

"Very well, thank you. The Baron is actually a considerable improvement over my previous employer in some ways." (Under other circumstances I would have already known the identity and nature of her previous employer, but as was, I had to be content with mentally filing that statement away for later study.)

"Kind of you to say so, Miss Jones," the Baron interjected. "But we really shouldn't keep you from your duties for too long, especially when the Stranger and I were about to negotiate a reasonable fee for my time and trouble in transporting him directly to a certain neighborhood in the Big Apple, saving him all that fuss of purchasing a ticket on an airplane and then hiring a cab to drive through that awful traffic. . . ." He gently grasped her right arm and began to turn her around to face the hall.

Miss Jones began to say, "But don't you just snap your fingers and open a door—"

The Baron hastily shushed her, steering her out of the room in the process. "Laymen," he said to me in a confiding tone, shaking his head ruefully as he firmly closed and locked the door behind her. "No comprehension of these matters and the hidden toll they take upon a humble practitioner."

"Undoubtedly," I said in my dryest tone. "But just what do you think a rapid transit to another city is worth? I can simply walk the distance in the manner of our earliest ancestors if it seems preferable to satisfying some outrageous demand." (That presupposed that he would simply let me leave his Georgetown house without extracting some sort of toll from me, but I saw no need to acknowledge that he probably had the upper hand at the moment if it came to violence.)

"A mere bagatelle," he said in a wheedling tone. "A promise for the future, as it were. Just pledge that after your normal resources are at your disposal again, you will answer one question for me, upon demand."

Even if I possessed a bank account, I would not believe in giving anyone a blank check. I said sternly, "There are some matters that are _really_ none of your business, Winters. I have a counteroffer. When I have my full knowledge again, I will either answer your first question, or else I will tell you to try again. And perhaps again, and again, and a hundred times again, if need be. The debt will not be discharged until you have asked a question and I have answered it in full."

"Agreed!" he said heartily, and I realized, tardily, that he had _never_ expected me to embrace his first offer. "Now follow me down the corridor, and we shall find a portal to cut the next leg of your journey down to a matter of a minute's walk . . . or thereabouts."

* * *

**Author's Note: **Baron Winters is a fairly obscure character in the DCU; I wouldn't be surprised if many of my readers can't place him at all. His principal appearances have been in the two short-lived "Night Force" titles, both written by Marv Wolfman; one for 14 issues in the 1980s, one for 12 issues in the 1990s. As far as I know, he's never appeared in any movies or television episodes, not even in a bit part, so his name is not exactly a household word.

In 1983, in "Nightforce #14," he offered Miss Alice Jones a job as his secretary. She has never been seen or heard from since that time. I merely assume that at the time of DC's continuity of 1993 (which, from her point of view, would have been _considerably less_ than "ten years" after she was hired), she was still working for the Baron at Wintergate Manor.


End file.
